A Time Undone
by K-yers
Summary: Before the world ended, Negan had been someone. He had had a job, a wife he loved, and a regular life. He had been a regular person like anyone else; the end of the world was just the catalyst for the man he'd eventually become. ON HIATUS
1. 1: Lucille

The alarm clock was playing _Africa_ by Toto, tuning into an eighties station to wake them. I opened my eyes, my head feeling heavy from tiredness and the booze from last night's bar crawl. As the song continued to play, the woman in bed with me slowly struggled to detach herself from me, the tangled sheets making it rather hard for her. The thin blond woman in bed rolled over, slapping her hand on the snooze button.

"Why'd you do that?" I asked with a groan. "I like that fucking song."

"Listen to it on your own time then," She said, finally detaching herself from me and getting up to walk into the bedroom's attached bathroom. I opened my eyes all the way to glare at the spot she disappeared at before I reached over to the radio and turned it back on, just in time for the chorus.

I sung the song quietly to myself as I moved about the room, picking up the clothes from last night. I got dressed slowly, tired and half hungover. I had just put my jeans back on when Renee returned, wearing a bathrobe and eyeing the gray shirt in my hand.

"Leaving already?" She asked.

"I thought you wanted me gone." I said, pausing in the act of putting my shirt back on. I was a second away from throwing the shirt back to the ground when she smirked at me and shook her head.

"I just like watching you leave." She said, looking me up and down. "Now do me a favor and get out of my house."

I smiled a toothy smile and finished putting the shirt back on. "Fine. I've got work today anyway."

She frowned. "You're a teacher right? You don't strike me as the type."

"I'm a sub, not a real teacher." I said with a shrug, turning in a circle trying to find the leather jacket I knew that I had definitely worn into this room. Out of the blur that was last night, I distinctly remembered Renee here practically ripping it off of me. I smirked as I finally found the leather jacket, crumbled in a heap next to her dirty clothes basket. "Besides, my area of expertise is gym. Running 'round a track, baseball, kickball, dodge ball, watching fat kids try to pass fitness tests, those are my cups of fucking tea."

"You know, I had a massive crush on my high school gym teacher." She said, raising a plucked eyebrow at me.

"We are not role playing my day at work ending with sex. That would just get confusing for me." I said, keeping my tone low and serious but letting a broad smile creep across my face. I shrugged the jacket on and put my socks and shoes on, hopping briefly on one foot to put each sock and shoe on. "I think that's everything I had. Be sure to bring my stuff by my place if you find it."

"I think I'd rather leave it here for you to come back and get." Renee replied evenly. I snorted in amusement and walked out of the bedroom, grabbing his wallet and truck keys from the kitchen table as I walked by it.

"Bye Renee!" I called over my shoulder as I left through the front door. I thought I heard a faint goodbye behind me but I didn't stay to figure out if she had said bye or not.

The high school was about two miles away from Renee's house, and the student parking lot was already crawling with juniors and seniors and bright and shiny new cars. I pulled my truck into the teacher's parking lot, finding an empty spot farther away from the building than I'd like. I started towards the building, stuffing my hands into my jacket's pockets and hoping that someone in the teacher's lounge had started a pot of coffee.

As I entered the building, I was confronted by the sights and smells of a high school in the morning. I walked down the hallway, recognizing majority of the teenagers around me from last year. Several of them looked like they were dressed to impress, given that it was the first day of school and these kids were all convinced that this year would be their best yet. I had been teaching gym here for the last five years and I had seen the same patterns at the start of every semester. I gave it two weeks before a lot of them started dressing like they didn't give a shit.

"Hi Coach!" One of the senior baseball players said.

I frowned, my head still hurting from the slowly fading hangover. "Harrington, don't talk to me until your gym period." I snapped, rubbing my temple with my fingertips.

The baseball player blinked once before smirking. "Whatever you say, Coach." I kept walking and finally made it to the safe haven that was the teacher's lounge. The smell of freshly brewed coffee drew me farther into the lounge, where paper cups and a large box of doughnuts were sitting.

"Oh, Negan!"

I groaned as Mrs. Carroll approached me, looking way too fucking chipper than would be considered this early in the morning. "Hiya, Carroll." I said, pouring the coffee into a cup. "Ready for your freshmen?"

She practically beamed when I mentioned her new students. "I got to meet a bunch of them last week during orientation. The ones I met seem really nice. Do try not to scare them too much." She giggled at her own joke and I raised an eyebrow at her before smirking.

"I'm a naturally scary guy," I said with a massive shrug. There was the sudden sound of a bang and I looked away from Mrs. Carroll to see someone unfamiliar facing off against the vending machine. I tilted my head slightly, only seeing the back of her.

Her hair was black and curly and fell past her shoulders. She was wearing a tight maroon dress that, from back here at least, didn't look to be all that school appropriate. I looked back to Mrs. Carroll. "I'll talk to ya later, Mrs. C."

Despite being an annoyingly chipper person, Mrs. Carroll saw right through me and she shook her head slightly at me, causing her blond ponytail to sway slightly. "Have fun, Negan." She said before grabbing a powdered doughnut and leaving the teacher's lounge. I grabbed my sugared coffee and my own doughnut before approaching the woman at the vending machine.

The woman bent down and stuck her arm into the slot right as I walked up to stand beside her. She glared up at me briefly before standing back up and putting her hands on her hips. "My bag of chips got stuck." She explained in a heated voice, nodding once to the vending machine in question.

I looked at the guilty vending machine. "Oh yeah, this fucker." I said, glancing at her briefly to see her reaction to my profanity. She just raised an eyebrow at me as I sat my coffee and doughnut down on the table. "This machine's notorious for catching people's food. Hold on, let me-"

I got down on the ground and stuck my arm up the slot, my fingers only brushing against the chip bag's edge. When I withdrew myself from the machine, the new woman was watching me with that eyebrow still raised. I looked away from her and glared at the vending machine.

"I got an idea," I said, stepping forward until I stood right beside the vending machine. "Let's see if this works." I grabbed a hold of the vending machine and started to tilt it slowly towards her.

That managed to catch her off guard. She took a slight step back and looked down to the front of the machine.

I was trying my hardest to ignore the strain on my arms and shoulders. "Is it out yet?" I asked through gritted teeth.

She reached forward and smacked the clear plastic with her hand, and I heard the satisfying slap of the chip bag landing in the slot area. I groaned in relief as I sat the machine back down. The woman opened her bag of chips and popped one into her mouth, looking happier to have her potato chips.

"Thanks for that, stranger," She said. "I don't know what I would've done without you."

"Probably go the rest of your day without a bag of Lay's," I said, finally catching my breath. I moved forward and grabbed my coffee, taking a deep gulp from it before sticking my hand out at the new woman to shake. "I'm Negan."

She looked down at my hand for a second before actually taking it to shake. "I'm Lucille Diaz." Her grip was tight on my hand and I could still feel the imprint of her hand on mine when she finally let go.

"Nice to be your knight in shining armor, Lucille Diaz," I said. "What d'you teach?"

"Eleventh grade history."

"That sounds boring as shit." I said without thinking.

Lucille raised that right eyebrow at me again, a faint smile playing at her lips. "Oh really? Well, what subject d'you teach, asshole?"

"I sub and I teach gym." I said, realizing how fucking lame it sounded when I said it out loud. Lucille let out a snort of amusement. "Oh, now who's the asshole? Laughing at my job."

"You called my subject boring five seconds ago, so you're still the asshole." She countered, popping another chip into her mouth. I opened my mouth to say something else when the warning bell rang shrilly right above our heads. Lucille gave it a wry glance before looking back to me. "Well, I've got about twenty juniors who'll be waiting for me. Thanks again for the chips, asshole!"

Before I could think of anything at all to say, she turned around and walked away, popping another chip into her mouth and not turning around to look at me. I watched her go with a weird butterfly like feeling in my gut. With a small smile on my face, I took another swig of coffee and grabbed my half forgotten doughnut, leaving the teacher's lounge and heading towards the gym.


	2. 2: Friendship

"If you can ace your Algebra tests, you can dodge a ball!" I shouted into the crowd of teenagers. A few of them stopped running and gave me exasperated looks, only to get hit again by a group of freshmen I recognized from junior varsity baseball tryouts throwing the large red balls. I waved one hand around. "Start dodging! This ain't 'see-how-many-times-you-can-get-hit ball!'"

The gym was filled with flying red balls. Every time someone got hit by one, it'd let out a loud and hollow sounding _slap_ that'd echo around the gym. It was still the second day of school and we were finally getting into actually doing fitness related activities. All day yesterday had been spent assigning lockers and the students getting their uniforms. The uniforms themselves had been the same since the fucking eighties: red shorts and white shirts.

Not everyone was participating in the dodge ball game going on. I gave the small clusters of freshmen a look, taking in who was sitting out. There were patterns to who always sat out, they were almost always the stoners or nerds or underachieving kids that teachers like Mrs. Carroll complained about. Right now, I saw a small cluster of boys and girls sitting together, their phones out and occasionally looking up to talk to one another. A few feet away from them was a pair of boys wearing oversized black clothes that, their knees showing due to tears and one of them was wearing a beanie despite the fact that it was close to eighty five degrees outside.

I narrowed my eyes at them for a moment before turning around and grabbing my clipboard sitting against the wall. I looked down the list, quickly finding their names. I pulled the pen off of the clipboard and put an _X_ beside their names, noting to myself that they didn't dress in the P.E uniforms.

The grading system I'd been working with for the last five years was that each week I gave out one grade. If they didn't dress in their P.E clothes, I took points off. If they sat out the entire week, I took points off. The grade was mostly participation and there was always a big batch of kids who refused to participate.

I made a move to put the clipboard back against the wall when the bell rang overhead. The freshmen sitting by the door practically ran out of it. I tucked my clipboard under my arm and quickly grabbed the fast food paper bag from my office.

It would be lunch period right now; I got my own lunch break. When the last of them left the gym and into the locker rooms to get their clothes again. I locked the double doors going into the gym and stood in the foyer area, waiting for the freshmen to hurry up and leave.

It took about ten minutes for them to hurry up and leave. I stood by the door, "Get out. Get out. Hurry up. Why are y'all walking like you're trying to let a snail win in a race? Move it!" That got them moving faster.

I double checked the locker rooms and locked the doors after finding them both empty. I huffed a sigh of relief before leaving the gym. My stomach was snarling and the burger and fries in my bag was practically yelling at me.

The teacher's lounge was empty when I entered it. I looked over to the vending machine and frowned at it, thinking back to Lucille yesterday. On the bulletin board in the corner, I did a quick scan of it and felt that butterfly feeling in my stomach when I saw that Lucille had this same lunch period.

I found Lucille sitting at the end of the teachers' lunch table. I smiled at her back and sped walked over to the table before the seats next to her were taken.

Lucille looked up when I sat down in front of her, and she raised that same eyebrow up at me. "Did I make a mistake in letting you help me yesterday? Are you gonna pop up every day to bother me?"

"I could be so much worse," I pointed out with a shrug. "I could pop up in your classroom one day."

"During class? You'd probably give half those nerds panic attacks." She paused and snorted at the sight of me frowning. "Oh yeah; I've heard about you, coach. You're an introverted, awkward kid's worst nightmare."

I smiled widely at that and clutched at my heart. "That's the highest compliment I have ever gotten in my life. I had no idea you felt that way about me, Lucille!"

Lucille smiled wryly and shook her head. "You're an idiot."

"That's another pretty high compliment in my book."

"You're also an asshole."

"Okay, that hurts a little bit."

Lucille snorted and reached over, grabbing one of the French fries from my lunch and tossing it into her mouth. I faked a glare at her. "Are we already on that level of friendship where we steal each other's food? This is moving too fast." I laughed at my own joke and Lucille rolled her eyes.

"You nearly tipped a vending machine over for me." Lucille said, stealing another fry. "I think it's safe to say that we're warranted to pass a handful of awkward friendship levels. Even if you are kinda creepy with how often you've popped up in my life."

"I've seen you twice in the past two days."

"Exactly. That's way too much."

I smiled, feeling that same damn butterfly feeling in my gut. I pushed the package of French fries forward so that it sat between our two lunches. Lucille looked down at it before looking up at me with a slight smile on her face. The butterfly feeling got worse and I broke eye contact, looking down to the fries and grabbing three.

"Fry hog," Lucille said, grabbing more fries for herself.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to flirt with me, given all these insults you're throwing my way." I said, finally managing to take a bite out of the burger I'd brought.

"You have a seriously messed up idea of flirting if someone calling you demeaning names turns you on." Lucille said, keeping a straight face. I snorted loudly, coughing slightly at the end of it. Lucille kept her straight face until I stopped coughing. I cleared my throat and the corner of Lucille's mouth tipped upwards.

I squinted at her, a laugh still building in my chest and the butterfly feeling raging in my gut. "You have a really nice smile, you know that?"

That managed to catch her off guard. She smiled a bit and this time she looked away from me, choosing instead to inspect the pattern on the lunch table. I straightened myself and took another bite of my burger, waiting for her to recover.

When she did, she raised that same eyebrow. "Now who's trying to flirt?"

"Guilty," I said, slightly raising a hand. "Though ninety percent of my personality is flirting, so have fun trying to figure out when I'm serious and when I'm actually trying to charm you."

Lucille snorted lightly. "This is going to be an interesting friendship."

"Cheers to that," I replied, grabbing my drink and lightly nudging it against hers. Lucille rolled her eyes up to the ceiling.

"I am immediately regretting this already." She said.

"We're friends, you said so yourself." I said with a laugh. "Too late to go back now." Lucille laughed shortly at that and stole more of the fries.


	3. 3: Cliffs Edge

Lucille was barely moving. Her hazel shaded eyes were staring hard at her computer screen, practically glaring at whatever was being shown there. I walked around her chair and looked at the screen, finding it open to a new email. "Who's Samantha Lee and what the hell is she complaining about?" I asked.

Lucille whipped her arm out at me and swatted my gut with the back of her hand. I let out a small grunt and took two steps to the side, leaning my back against her desk. Lucille finally looked away from her computer to fix her gaze on me.

"She's one of my students' mom and she's complaining about how I gave her son detention this entire month." Lucille said, her voice getting an edge to it.

I raised an eyebrow. "What'd the poor kid do to get that sorta punishment?"

"He refused to do homework for a whole month." Lucille said. "When I told him to get on it, he muttered under his breath 'You should get on this dick.'"

I wrinkled my nose in disgust despite the fact that a sudden wave of anger I felt. I tried to remember this kid's face; if he was in any of my gym periods, he was going to start running laps for weeks. Lucille shrugged at me, rolling her eyes at my reaction.

"It's fine, Negan," She said dismissively. "He's gonna be in detention for a month since that's the most I can give him. His mom's just acting like a bitch but I bet she's going to be more pissed at him when I tell her exactly why I'm giving her son all that detention." She smirked in what looked like a sinister way and started typing at light speed, writing the email to this boy's mom.

I snorted at her and walked away from the desk, looking around her empty classroom. We were spending our lunch break in her classroom now, seeing as the cafeteria was full of loud ass teenagers and my office in the gym stunk like the gym. The first time Lucille had entered my office, her face had bunched up and her upper lip had curled and she had declared, "Smells like stale corn chips and dirty gym clothes in here. How do you live with yourself?"

She had refused to drop the subject until I proved that I had bought about half a dozen air fresheners that I plugged into every socket in the wall.

Lucille and I had been friends for close to two months now. She was fun to be around; she was vulgar when she wanted to be and she was really fucking smart. Lucille could (and had) rant to me the different policies of men from history that I hadn't known existed. She liked making fun of idiot students with me. She was awesome.

And that God damned butterfly feeling I got whenever I was around her had just gotten worse.

This friendship we had made had made this school year a hell of a lot better than any of the other five school years I had worked here. The last thing I wanted to do was somehow mess up this and end up having to avoid Lucille for the rest of our careers here. Knowing Lucille, she'd probably trash talk me for the rest of her days. I wanted this friendship to go as long as possible, the last thing I wanted was for this to end.

I glanced back over to where she was sitting at her desk, completely frozen as she read something else on her computer screen. Her black hair was straightened today, and a huge lock of it had fallen past her face and was swaying gently from the air flow of the air conditioning. I saw her dark hazel eyes flicking back and forth over the screen, showing me that she was reading something. I looked away from her the moment I felt my face start to heat up.

The bell rang, signalling the end of lunch and the beginning of the next class period. I looked back over to Lucille, who was already looking back at me. "Have fun with you office reeking of corn chips and sweaty socks."

"I actually bought myself a bottle of Febreeze," I said haughtily. "So now, my office smells like a nice Hawaiian breeze."

"I'm gonna have to stop by and confirm that." Lucille said. It could've been just a passing comment, but it was enough to make my stomach clench. I smiled at Lucille, hoping to God that it didn't look forced as hell, and Lucille smirked at me. "Go scare some kids, Negan. I'll stop by your office later today to prove your Hawaiian breeze claim wrong."

"You will be disappointed because my office smells pleasant as fuck." I said right as the door to the classroom opened. I recognized the two girls walking into the classroom; they walked circles around the gym or track, never really participating but they did more than others. The one with glasses widened her eyes at what I said and the other one did a horrible job of hiding a smile.

Lucille narrowed her eyes at me, but she was still smiling at me. "Get out of here before you traumatize them anymore than you already have."

"As you wish, Miss Diaz," I replied, drumming my hands briefly on the podium. Lucille raised that eyebrow again and nodded at the door. I smirked at her one last time before turning towards the door, catching the eye of both the girls. "Ladies." I said. The two girls glanced at each other with raised eyebrows and I took my leave of the room, feeling Lucille's bright eyes watching me leave.

* * *

Lucille kept her word and showed up in my office after school ended, and an hour and a half later, she was still sitting on my desk, leaning back on her hands and swinging her feet slightly so that her heels thumped lightly on the desk.

"I wanna update on what Mrs. Lee said to you." I was saying, leaning back in my chair and resting my feet on the desk near her. "Has she emailed you back yet?"

Lucille let out a loud huff of laughter and nodded. "Oh yeah; I almost forgot about that. She emailed me back 'bout five minutes after I had replied to her. She said something to the extent of, 'My son would _never_ say that to any woman let alone a teacher!'"

"You've got a meeting with her, don't you?" I asked.

"Thursday after school." She said, looking like she was dreading it already. "You have no idea how much these kinds of parents irritate me; the way they think their kids can't do any wrong and how, if any teacher tries to call them out, they get so fucking pissy about it. They act like I've offended their family honor by writing their kids up." She paused and looked at me with that one eyebrow raised. "Have you ever gotten into trouble with a parent?"

I shrugged. "Nothing that stands out. I don't think these kids ever tell their parents what happens in gym class. It's like Vegas in that way; what happens in the gym, stays there."

"You should make that a sign and hang it outside."

"I just might do that now. Anything to get teens ready to learn about fitness."

Lucille snorted at that. "From what I've heard, you just put a dodge ball in their hands and yell at them to go for it."

I tilted my head slightly at her. "You say that a lot."

"Say what?"

"That you've heard something about me." I pointed out. I smirked. "Do people talk about me a lot, or are you asking around?"

I hadn't meant it like an actual question for her to get flustered at, but Lucille suddenly blinked and she didn't answer right away. She instead looked away from me and shrugged. "You are the only gym teacher here; makes sense that every time someone talks about it, it'd be about you."

"I guess," I said, my eyes narrowing in on her. She still hadn't looked at me and was instead studying the locked metal cabinet that held all the gym supplies I had. I blinked. "Lucille?"

Lucille stifled a sigh before finally turning to face me. "What?" She asked, her voice hardening slightly.

"Don't hate me for asking, but I think I have to at this point," I started, barely giving any thought to what I was about to say. "Are you into me?" She scoffed at my question and got off my desk, causing me to stand to my feet in a hurry, nearly tripping over myself. "Hold it. I mean, I mean, you seem like you are. And I-"

"And you what?" Lucille cut me off, facing me head on and tilting her head, mimicking me. "Finish that sentence, Negan." I stared at her, keeping our gazes locked on each other. Lucille broke the gaze and looked me up and down, looking like she was slowly deflating. "You're an idiot, Negan." Lucille said, the heat in her voice disappearing. We stared at each other for a very brief moment before everything happened at once.

Lucille and I both took big steps forward at the same time, her hands reaching up and grabbing onto my face. One of my hands went to her waist, and the other instantly went into her long black hair. Lucille used her hands to bring my face down until our lips were on each other. The butterfly feeling I had had ever since I met her was going out of control as we kissed, her lips soft as sin on mine.

By the time we finally let go of each other, her hair suddenly looked tangled and I could feel my face viciously heating up. Lucille blinked once at me before nodding and smiling softly to herself. "See you tomorrow?" She asked, something in her voice changed.

I nodded. "Uh, yeah."

For a moment I thought that this had somehow backfired on me, seeing how neither of us were saying anything. But then Lucille's small smile grew and I watched in growing pleasure that she was blushing. With one last look at me, Lucille quickly turned and fled from the office, not even stopping to run her hand through her hair to fix it.


	4. 4: Closer

"Favorite ice cream flavor?"

"Cookies and cream."

"That's a bullshit answer. You just picked the most generic flavor in ice cream history!"

"That's my favorite flavor, you asshole! What's your favorite then?"

"Chocolate."

"Now who's being generic, you dick?"

"Can't beat the classics, babe."

Lucille rolled off of me, tossing her curled black hair over one shoulder and resting her chin on my bare collarbone. "Whatever. Favorite sport then, Coach?"

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling. "Hm. Considering I showed you the baseball card collection I've had since I was six, I'm gonna go with volleyball."

"No need for sarcasm this early in the morning." Lucille said. "You know, I used to play softball in high school?"

"Really? That just made you twenty times hotter."

That made her laugh and I smirked just from hearing it. Lucille gave me a side eye, finally rolling out of bed and she started getting her clothes off the floor. I watched her for a moment before sitting up so that I was sitting in the middle of the mattress. Lucille's black hair was slightly tangled but it still managed to look like she had styled it to perfection.

I had learned a lot about her in the past couple of months. She was an only child, just like me. Her parents had split when she was young and she had chosen to become a teacher because she hadn't known exactly what she had wanted to do. Now she got to talk about her history and dead people as much as she wanted and teenagers pretty much had no choice but to listen to her. Whenever she read anything, she always got super still as if she couldn't read whenever she moved. Whenever we went out anywhere together, she preferred driving to sitting in the passenger seat.

We had technically only been dating for close to three months, but she had already become my favorite person in the world.

"I take it as your favorite sport's baseball too?" I called out to her back and she disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the sound of the water faucet start before she stuck her head out of the doorway to look at me.

"Course it is," She said. "I've still got my bat from college."

"I thought you said you played in high school?" I asked.

"I played in college too, just not for the school." She explained with a shrug, finally ducking into the bathroom completely. I sat up in bed until my back was resting on the backboard. I glanced over at the clock, seeing that it was about fifteen minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. I rolled out of bed and grabbed the first pair of pants I could find on the floor.

Lucille walked out of the bathroom, a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. I halted for a moment and blinked at her, barely registering the fact that I didn't have any spare toothbrushes. Her black hair had been pulled up into a messy ass bun with wild and curly strands flying out of the knot. She was wearing one of my shirts too, the size of it just swallowing her up. I blinked again and she caught me staring.

"Wha?" She asked, the toothbrush muffling her voice.

I shook my head. "Nothing, nothing. Keep doing what you're doing."

Lucille raised an eyebrow at me but rolled her eyes anyway. She went back into the bathroom, continuing to brush her teeth. I had finished getting dressed when I heard Lucille call out, "Hey, d'you have any Advil?"

"Hold on." I said, walking out of the bedroom and to the kitchen. It took me a minute to find the Advil; it was somewhere in the far back of the medicine cabinet. I realized that I should probably restock this thing. Even the Advil was running low with only four orange pills clanging around the bottom of the bottle. I walked back to the bathroom and handed the bottle to her. "There ya go."

"Thanks." She said, popping two pills into her mouth before cupping her hands under the still running water of the faucet. She was frowning hard, a dimple showing up between her eyebrows.

"You okay?" I asked.

There was a slight hesitation before she nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just have a bad headache. Nothing major." I shrugged slightly at her and moved over to the sink to brush my teeth. Lucille stared at me for a moment, her expression unreadable. "What're you doing today?"

"Goin' to the store," I said, spitting a fat load of saliva and paste into the sink. "I took a look 'round my kitchen. I found jack shit."

"Yeah I've noticed." Lucille said with a smirk. "Your house looks like a piss poor college student lives here instead of, oh I don't know, an actual fucking adult."

"Well don't bother trying to spare my feelings."

Lucille laughed shortly at that and shook her head, her messy bun flopping from side to side. "You want me to tag along? Maybe I could help you out?" She walked forward until she was right at my back and she wrapped her thin arms around my body and squeezed my sides. I smiled as I felt her face pressed into my back, which only lasted for a second. "Your back is too hard to properly do this."

I chuckled loudly at that. "That's the first time I've heard that. Sorry for being in such amazing physical shape."

"Fuck you." Lucille said, but her arms just squeezed my back tighter. I looked down to her hands folded in front of my gut and smiled to myself. I put my hand over hers and rubbed my thumbs across her skin, relishing in how fucking soft her hands were. Lucille's forehead was pressed hard against my back and I barely made an effort to glance over my shoulder at her.

"You okay?" I asked, getting the feeling that something was bothering her.

"I'm fine." Her voice was muffled since her face was pressed into my back. "Are we goin' to the store or not?"

I started walking slowly out of the bathroom with her still attached. I kept my hand on both of hers wrapped around me. Lucille walked with with, giggling slightly as we moved. That sound of her laughing caused a feeling inside to sort of burst, and I started chuckling without meaning too.

"Are we goin' to the store like this?" I asked, reaching behind with one hand and grabbing a hold of her side with my free hand.

It took about ten minutes before she was decent to go to the store with me. Lucille had found one of my old baseball hats and slapped it on her head, pulling her messy bun through the back of the cap.

Lucille drove to the store, telling me all about what she planned for class on Monday. "We're getting to the Great Depression chapter on Monday."

"Sounds like that's gonna be fun as hell." I said.

"Ha, you're hilarious."

The grocery store we ended up going to was the SalesMart just a few miles away. In the front entrance of the huge ass store were a few propped up along the walls. One was playing a cartoon and a few others were channeling different stations. We hadn't gone that far past the before Lucille stopped to watch one in particular for a minute.

"What d'you think about all that?" Lucille asked, pointing at the T.V screen. I looked up at the screen in question and stared for a second at the footage being played up there. At first, what I was seeing wasn't registering. But then I found myself frowning hard at the footage.

Though the T.V was muted, I could see that they were talking about the flu that had been going around lately. I had barely thought about the flu; right now it was only really effecting big places in Florida like Miami and Orlando and Tampa. The video footage here was showing overcrowded hospitals and flu victims with grayish skin and coughing their lungs out. I kept expecting to see more new footage, but it looked like the scenes we were being shown was on a loop.

"They haven't said anything 'bout it spreading right?" I asked.

Lucille kept her eyes on the screen and shrugged. "I don't think so. I think it's mainly in Florida right now. Though if their airlines from infected cities are still up and running, it could spread really fast through that."

"How'd you figure that?"

"Basic knowledge about a epidemic." Lucille replied, looking up at me. "Airports are the way sicknesses travel; gets them around faster than how they used to spread."

"Tell me again how the plague spread?" I asked with a smirk.

"Rats. Airports are our new rats." Lucille answered my question with an air of slight annoyance. "We need more Advil, by the way."

I stopped walking to frown at her. "You still have a headache? Any other details you want to tell me?"

"I'm tired and it's just the headache." She snapped lightly. But the way she said made me think that there was something else to it.

But I didn't want to push it further. Whenever Lucille got snappy about a subject, she usually got mad whenever that subject was pushed. I shrugged and put my arm around her shoulders. Lucille smirked lightly and leaned hard against my side, wrapping her own arm around my waist, her fingers holding onto my shirt. She was leaning heavily on me, as if for support. I just tightened my grip on her and held on tight.


End file.
